I really wanted to love Fantastic Four: True Story, but Cornell just isn’t able to make it precious enough. The concept is somewhat complex–Sue is suffering from melancholy and discovers it has to do with not wanting to read fiction. It turns out the whole world is suffering from a similar melancholy (a major problem with the narrative is Reed “discovering” that universal ailment–someone else would have noticed first).
So the Fantastic Four journey into fiction to find out the problem.
Cornell does a great job with Johnny and Ben–he even abbreviates their bickering, which only lasts a page, but is a fine approach to what otherwise would have been something familiar.
It’s Sue and Reed who come off wrong. Cornell has them blathering to each other like they’re out of a romance novel.
Plus, Domingues’s art fails. He doesn’t do either element–superhero or magical–well.
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